Was not into it for the first half--interesting, but not gripping. I'm enough of a Seattle kid that I was into it for the city history though, so stuck it out to the point where Curtis's life gets more exciting. He's a good read, though I did get tired going back to him as a subject rather than continuing to talk about the nations he was studying, which, frankly, seem much more interesting. The very good: on a mission to read more anthropology/ethnology that gets ignored.